Exact effective action for fermions in one dimension with backscattering at a boundary

Abstract

We report exact results for the partition function for free Dirac fermions on a half line with physically sensible boundary conditions. An exact effective action for general backscattering amplitudes is derived. The action also includes the effects of both a (time-dependent) forward scattering amplitude and a dynamical chiral twist of the fermion boundary conditions. For a small backscattering amplitude, the effective action has the expected boundary Sine-Gordon form. We discuss applications of our results to one-dimensional Fermi systems with local backscattering.